Thursday, January 08, 2015

Egyptian Media: 3 New H5N1 Cases

# 9551

In the `For What it’s worth’ department, we’ve a statement appearing in multiple Arabic media sources – purportedly released by the Egyptian MOH – but one that has not yet been posted on their website. It informs us (in vague terms) of three new H5N1 cases.

Unfortunately, it provides none of the usual `identifiers’ we use to track cases (age, gender, onset date,etc.) making it almost impossible to chart, or match up these cases to other media reports.

Hopefully this isn’t some kind of trend, as we saw the same lack of identification data earlier today in two separate H7N9 reports from China covering 10 cases (see here andhere).

Complicating an already complex picture - the last official update from the Egyptian MOH (see link) issued three days ago – listed only 3 cases for the new year, and now they say 7.

A heady pace, and if the case count is accurate, it would appear that somewhere along the way we’ve missed a case. Not that anyone really believes we have a handle on all of the cases, but it is nice to be able to track and chart the ones we know about.

I’ve spent the better part of the last hour in a Skype huddle with Sharon Sanders of FluTrackerstrying to make sense of this report.

I can’t report much progress, other than a good deal of venting on both of our parts, but we suspect the fatal case in Gharbia may have been the woman whose death last week sparked amini-riot at the hospital.

the Ministry of health and population has announced the heal confirmed cases of bird flu to a 51-year-old from Asyut province.

The Ministry confirmed in a statement that three confirmed cases بڤيروس N5 H1 (bird flu), two of them in the eastern provinces of menoufia, while case Western Province died last Friday before the outcome of the sample.

And the total number of cases of bird flu during the 2015 date 7 case of healing, and 5 cases under treatment, deaths, and the cases that occurred during the 2015 two Minia and Cairo, Qaliubiya, menoufiya, East and West.

It called upon the Ministry of health and population of citizens who are dealing with immediate direction to the nearest poultry hospital for the health service if they have flu symptoms, where the infected bird flu drug Tamiflu within the first 24 hours of the onset of symptoms increases the healing rates of disease and reduces death rates.

The Health Ministry advised people who deal with poultry to be careful and prudent when dealing with birds, especially that shows symptoms of disease and the need to take preventive action to prevent infection such as covering your mouth and nose when handling poultry, wash hands with SOAP and water after handling birds and children not accompany poultry or slaughter premises as well as the need to separate the bird for the living quarters.